GeoTel became profitable in the first quarter of 1996, less than a year after its first customer installed its product. That product was the Intelligent CallRouter. It looked at every incoming call to a company's call centers and sent it to the best place to answer it, even across different cities and phone systems. Big companies ran call centers in many locations. When GeoTel filed to go public in 1996, it had licensed its software to more than 20 companies.

One Product, One Job

GeoTel was incorporated in Delaware in June 1993 to build software for call centers. Through the first half of 1995 it worked mostly on research and development. Its first customer installed the Intelligent CallRouter in May 1995, and revenue followed in the fourth quarter of that year. The company expected that one product to bring in almost all of its revenue. It was based in Littleton, Massachusetts.

Twelve Dollars, Then Cisco

GeoTel priced its IPO at $12 a share in November 1996 and listed on the Nasdaq National Market as GEOC. Call routing grew more valuable as phone calls and data networks came together. In 1999 Cisco Systems agreed to buy GeoTel in a stock deal worth about $2 billion. The merger closed in mid-1999, and GeoTel stopped reporting as a public company in June 1999.

Cover: The Map of the Globe, Terminal Page of the set of eight Pictures of Foreign Ships, Unknown Artist. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a map of the globe (routing calls by geography).